Into the Wild

Oddly enough, I can understand what Chris McCandless must have been thinking. I have thought it myself. People *used* to be able to just LIVE… we were here, on this planet, and could live freely upon it. We lived without houses, bills, grocery stores, canned goods, police, vast governments, bosses, paychecks and Capitalism.The term “unemployed” was invented. A by-product of our society’s “advancement”.

So, he wants to go into the wild, where Man once lived freely, and just do that again.

However, what he failed to realize – is that humans who lived freely under the sun and off the earth in previous times…did so with thousands of years of passed-on word of mouth training. Thousands of years of people in their human group learning “ew that plant is aweful, hunt this game in this way, take these steps or this will spoil”… all the Talking… as humans grew up, they were embeded in this every day workable knowledge.

Now, we are embeded from birth in car driving, ad watching, store buying, money managing, “future in society” focus options and entertainment. There’s no village hunter passing by us telling some wild story about a close run in with a nasty beast, and how they managed it. Seeds we eat are FDA approved.

I must agree with the summary that to go into the wild today to live off the land, without at least taking the time and effort to fill in for these years of embeded knowledge we *used* to have – is actually suicide. And sometimes, even a trained “mountain man” wandering into the wild to go it alone is equally… suicide. Because humans are, and have always been, pack animals. Our evolution has only been allowed to continue because of this. Because when somebody ate something bad, they passed that knowledge onto others – and recieved knowledge and assistance from others – not just alone against The World.

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And furthermore, what “gets” me about this, is the complete farse of some of this last words: “I have lived a happy life” What? What the hell are you on about? People who have lived a “happy” life, do not retreat from society and decide to live alone with their thoughts in the wilderness. Face it: you’ve been jaded, depressed and miserable, from the sounds of it. Just be honest about it. Don’t go all cheesy “I have lived a happy life” bullshit LYING in your last words. That’s crap. If you had lived a happy life, you would be somewhere living it still. Dumb ass. How did he manage to study Anthropology, pass the classes, and come away without understanding the Passed-Down-Knowledge thing of peoples of the past? I definetely sympathize with and understand his need and desire to not be held prisoner in a society that was not his making…oh gods you all know I understand that… but how he got away from college without having learned anything about hunter/gatherer cultures is astonishing.